5 am Fire destroys home in Morrisburg

An early morning fire completely destroyed a home on Merkley St. in Morrisburg this morning, luckily no one was injured in the blaze. Fire crews and police were still on the scene at 10 am. Watch next week's edition for photos and more information.

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The response for the Kraft Food for Families initiative has been inspiring and for the Mountain House of Lazarus Food Bank a local success story.

Kraft Food for Families is a community-based program designed to help Canadian families get food on the table.

The original goal was to donate up to $50,000 to 30 food banks across Canada and award a $10,000 bonus donation to the food bank with the most names in support.

According to the Kraft Food for Families website, “people from across Canada came together and added thousands of names in support of their local food banks, helping us to reach that goal.”

Leading the way were the people in the Owen Sound area. With each vote translating into a $1 donation, some 22,232 people there voted for the Salvation Army Food Bank which serves 600 people each month.

The Owen Sound total, in combination with other votes across the country, allowed the contest to quickly reach the 50,000 vote maximum set by Kraft Foods.

Also as a result of the voting, the Owen Sound Food Bank received over $30,000 ($1 per vote and the $10,000 bonus donation).

Shortly after the Owen Sound victory, Kraft Food for Families announced a phase two initiative to support community banks, which was $1,000 weekly donations for 10 weeks, to the food bank collecting the most names in each of the weeks.

It began on December 2 and wraps up February 10.

In week five, thanks to a great response from the local public, the House of Lazarus Food Bank in Mountain, was the $1,000 winner.

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“We are spending these two days in intensive training,” said Chris McDonough, chief of South Dundas Fire and Emergency Services. “We are training to learn how to safely remove fire fighters who may have become trapped in smoke, or in actual fires or in collapsed buildings.”

Firefighters from the three South Dundas stations gathered at the Morrisburg fire hall on Saturday, April 13, and again on Sunday, April 14, for special Rapid Intervention Training (RIT). The course was taught by Mark van der Feyst, president of Firestar Services Inc., and his highly qualified, expert staff.

“Many fire departments have begun to train their personnel in the concepts of rescuing downed, trapped or injured firefighters,” chief McDonough explained. “The concept of rapid intervention teams is not new. It’s been around for 10-15 years in the US, but has only begun to infiltrate the Canadian fire service in the last five years. What was once a trend is now a standard practice with many fire departments implementing some kind of a RIT program.”

Van der Feyst and his instructors stressed that safely rescuing a fire fighter is actually a very different proposition than rescuing a civilian.

“A fire fighter, in full gear, carrying all of his equipment, on the average could weigh close to 300 pounds,” van der Feyst told the South Dundas teams. “This is a very different situation than rescuing a civilian. For example, staircases in older buildings are often wooden and narrow and may turn several times. In blinding smoke and darkness, with air at a premium, special techniques must be learned to bring a fallen or injured firefighter to safety in these circumstances.”

Using the former Loyalist Lodge as an additional training area, fire fighters learned and practiced, hands on, the best ways to stage rescues of injured colleagues in constricted areas and under extreme conditions.

“To be an RIT firefighter requires special training. It requires emphasis on many subjects that need to be looked at from the RIT perspective,” said McDonough.

“Is every fire department able to provide this type of training to each of its members? Probably not all at once, but over time, each department can. How and when is up to each department. This is the kind of training that is needed and beneficial for a firefighter to be proficient at rescuing downed, lost or trapped firefighters.”